School Budget Cuts
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Tasers and Schools: A Recipe for Disaster
By William Sprecher
A recent article in Mother Jones discusses the trend of tasers being used on school campuses. The article gave me pause. As a male growing up in a Washington, D.C. suburb, where the outdoors provided an escape from the torturous mid-Atlantic summer humidity, I have had my share of run-ins with the police. While all of these encounters ended in little more than an officer asking, “Don’t you think you’d best head home?” they did give me a sense of how an innocent activity, like spending a comfortable moment outside, was interpreted in my neighborhood through the lens of gender and age.
I find it unfortunate that this type of negative attitude made us unwelcome on our own neighborhood streets, but what is more problematic is that this same view has made its way into our educational system, a system that was designed with young people in mind.
Over the past decade, schools, mainly public schools, have become increasingly militarized with the introduction of metal detectors, security guards, and now taser-toting police officers. To treat an environment whose intentions were to educate and expand intellectual capacity as something of a time bomb, ready to explode at any moment, seems to me contradictory and frankly disturbing.
The Newest Game Show Craze: Rot or Not
By Caitlin Grey
On June 23, 2009, Mayor Gavin Newsom passed a mandatory composting law for the city of San Francisco. This ultra-green legislation sets a goal of 75% diversion (only 25% of waste would go to landfills) by 2010 and zero waste by 2020. But how does the mayor make a law that requires a skill? How can he enforce people to change their lifestyles?
Composting isn’t easy. What rots and what doesn’t requires the eye of an environmentalist, and some education as well. There are a few programs underway that help people learn the ropes of composting:
Fines are delayed until 2011 when people will have “acclimated” to the new rules, but I still wonder how much the average Californian really knows about composting and waste.
Youth Radio put their composting knowledge to the test. Would we be able to survive in San Francisco’s cut-throat environmentalist world? Find out on Youth Radio’s newest game show, Rot or Not!
Youth Radio Talks Health Care Ads
Youth Radio interns discuss some of the recent health care television ads.
Oh Snap!
By Erin Bilir
Not that long ago I was at the checkout counter of the video store with my seven year old sister and her friend who was spending the night. For the past several excruciatingly long hours the two of them had been giggling, shouting, stomping, shoving, and getting into all sorts of little kid mischief, when, all of sudden, I noticed that they were silent. Curious, I turned to see them both transfixed by a copy of Rolling Stone magazine featuring the two lead actresses from the CW show Gossip Girl. The cover featured the stars licking an ice cream cone and staring rather suggestively at the camera.
Her big blue eyes wide with wonder, my sister’s friend turned to me and just said, “They’re SO pretty.”
Seeing the two first graders looking with such reverence at the young starlets–, whose doe-eyed, slack lipped looks were slightly more than “come-hither”– I was freaked out. Everyone always says that “sex sells.” And if that’s true, I wondered, what does it mean for all of the young women and girls growing up in a Capitalist society like America? If my little sister was being exposed to it, where else would overt sexuality rear its head?
Recently, the educators as Angevine Middle School near Boulder, Colorado sent out an email to parents asking them to stop their children from wearing “jelly bracelets” as a result of concerns that the bracelets carry various sexual connotations. Priced at about three dollars a pack, the bracelets come in a variety of colors each of which, according to an Internet game called “Snap,” corresponds with a sexual act. Internet sources, one of which calls itself “the Department of Adolescent Promiscuity,” indicate that if a boy “snaps” a bracelet off of a girl’s arm then that girl must engage in the act which corresponds to the color of the bracelet.
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Study Examines Minority Health Care Costs
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank in Washington, DC, has published a new study that raises the question of how inequities in health care for minorities are impacting the cost of health care in the country at large. The study was carried out by researchers at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.
Some of the health disparities minorities face include these statistics:
•Mexican-Americans are nearly twice as likely to have diabetes as whites.
•Vietnamese-American women have nearly five times the rate of cervical cancer as white women.
•Black men are twice as likely to have prostate cancer as white men.
The study confirmed that minority Americans are much more likely to die as infants, have shorter life spans, and have higher rates of diseases and disabilities. However, the issue is complex and the cause of the disparities is not completely known.
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Baucus Plan Fines Young People Without Health Insurance
By: Emily Beaver
No health insurance? That’ll be $950.
For many young people, health insurance is unaffordable. But under some plans to reform health care, going without health insurance will be expensive, too.
Senator Max Baucus recently introduced a health care reform plan that requires everyone to get insurance. Anyone who doesn’t have insurance would be fined up to $950 a year, depending on income.
Making sure everyone gets health insurance is an important goal of many of the plans to reform health care. For some, the principle that everyone should have health care is behind the “individual mandate” requiring everyone to get health insurance. But there’s another reason lawmakers want to get everyone insured–to lower the government’s cost of making health insurance affordable.
All forms of insurance, including health insurance, work by spreading costs among a pool of people. Since young people generally spend less on medical care, their insurance premiums help to subsidize the cost of care for older, sicker people. When young people don’t buy insurance, costs go up for those who are insured. So making sure everyone contributes to health insurance is important to lowering costs overall.
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Leland Yee Takes on University Transparency
Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, introduced two bills that he hopes will bring greater transparency to the California State University and the University of California systems. SB 218 would require more accountability for non profits that do business with California’s public universities . SB 219 would expand whistle blower protection for UC employees. The bills are currently waiting for the Governor’s signature.
The California Report’s Rachel Myrow discussed the two bills with the senator.
Youth Radio Reflects on Education During a Recession
A Student Perspective on the Walkout at UC Irvine
By Prairie Park
September 24, 2009 seemed like a normal first day of school: students were filled with anticipation and excitement for the school year. Even while I walked along Ring Road at 9:30 a.m.(a.k.a. “the crack of dawn” for many college students), there was an array of tables set up to snatch any and every student’s attention. As I wandered through the seemingly never-ending rows of fraternity and club members inviting me to their Welcome Week events, I thought to myself, “Ah, the sweet smell of cardstock in the morning.”
However, as I walked through the less crowded paths to my morning class, I heard small clusters of groups here and there discussing the walkout that was scheduled to take place. Students were deciding whether or not they would attend the rally at noon.
When I got to class, more of my classmates were talking about the walkout. Glad to eavesdrop, I heard one student explaining the effects of the budget cuts and why the walkout was so important. In another conversation, I heard a student talking about how his class was canceled because of the walkout. The professor had written them an email saying, “No class today. UCI under siege.” Even my professor decided to make his opening statement for the year about the positive aspects of the walkout and went on to explain to us why he had decided to continue on with class as scheduled rather than participate in the walkout for the whole day.
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UC Berkeley Walkout
Thousands of students and faculty members at UC Berkeley protested against budget cuts and proposed fee increases. Denise Tejada brought back this video from the scene.
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